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San Francisco is spending $1.7M on one public toilet

sfchronicle.com

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Re: San Francisco is spending $1.7M on one public toilet

#601

Post by mrits »

Phlogistique wrote: post #371
mrits wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I'd take my chances with the sidewalk than risk a startups new self cleaning censor. Literally a shit storm

All the toilets in Paris self-clean between users. You don't need the sensor to work not to get sprayed, just to exit the toilet when a voice says "EXIT THE TOILET NOW, THE SELF CLEANING PROCESS IS ABOUT TO BEGIN.

Even self flushing toilets are often broken. A certain building I worked at I had to jump off quickly and out of the way so it didn't spray up with a trigger happy mega flush.

Re: San Francisco is spending $1.7M on one public toilet

#602

Post by frereubu »

nsxwolf wrote: post #229
frereubu wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Clearly" is doing a lot of work in that sentence unless you've delved deeply into the approval process of this specific toilet. It's absolutely believable that this is just produced by sclerotic bureaucracy.

What's the difference between bureaucracy and grift? All those 1.7 million dollars go into pockets, no?

In my definition, bureaucracy is unintentional, whereas grift is intentional. I subscribe to the view that in general these things are more likely to be due to cock-up than conspiracy. Not everyone is Robert Moses.

Re: San Francisco is spending $1.7M on one public toilet

#603

Post by jquery »

carapace wrote: post #573
jquery wrote: post #396

Any actual SF residents in this thread? I’m seeing a lot of very authoritative posts coming from places of ignorance. One person even called it a “right wing dystopia”. Here’s the bottom line. The problems we are trying to solve in SF are hard . This place is fully developed. No way around that. Is SF perfect? No, not at all. But damn if this city doesn’t try its hardest, moreso than almost any other city I know of.…

> Any actual SF residents in this thread? Hello! :) I grew up here, and live here now. I'm left-leaning by USA standards. > One person even called it a “right wing dystopia”. As an aside, I think they meant something like "what a right-winger would call a dystopia", not that it was the result of right-wing policies (which makes no sense.) > The problems we are trying to solve in SF are hard. Not this one. Pooping and…

Your post didn’t offend me, if anything it reminded me how hard the problems are to truly solve. I appreciate your ideas, but we are in a democracy and you need buy-in.

> the city is empty

Maybe so, but you have to convince the residents that doubling the density won’t affect them. I’d be happy to double the height of my residence and house another family or two here, but right now I’m already near the max zoned height.

> A toilet could be a simple as a hole over the sewer: squat and go.

We have storm drains. The problem is any time we offer privacy, they get used for shooting up drugs and people pass out inside the bathrooms. This greatly raises the cost. We could solve this by being super tough on crime but for better or worse we’ve decided not to mass incarcerate.

I agree that SF does homeless sweeps now and then, but it’s generally a last resort, not a first one. And notice is required… other cities will give you much rougher treatment than SF. Or they have severe weather which acts as a more effective deterrent to homelessness than any level of policing.

I’m also seeing a lot more old RVs where I used to see tents, I think that’s an improvement even if I’d still consider them homeless. RVs are also illegal but are much less of an eyesore than tents and probably safer too. There’s probably even roaming services going around and “emptying” the RVs because I’m seeing a lot less urination on the street lately.

Re: San Francisco is spending $1.7M on one public toilet

#604

Post by jquery »

notch656a wrote: post #531
jquery wrote: post #396

Any actual SF residents in this thread? I’m seeing a lot of very authoritative posts coming from places of ignorance. One person even called it a “right wing dystopia”. Here’s the bottom line. The problems we are trying to solve in SF are hard . This place is fully developed. No way around that. Is SF perfect? No, not at all. But damn if this city doesn’t try its hardest, moreso than almost any other city I know of.…

>But damn if this city doesn’t try its hardest, moreso than almost any other city I know of. This is the problem. The problem is you're trying too damn hard. Just build the fucking toilet. Less trying hard to do things the perfect way and be better than "almost any other city." At this point you should be looking at Camden or Gary IN for inspiration.

>“Just build the toilet”

Did you think we are doing anything else? The article makes it pretty clear that’s all that is happening, but it’s making a big fuss over the fact some planning needs to take place, and that the planning website has some corporate-speak about doing our best or whatever.

$1.7m is what it costs to hook up a full service public restroom in SF from idea to completion. It’s not cheap to build on top of fully developed area, you can’t just “dig and hope for the best”. No, you can’t cheat by sticking a commode on top of a storm drain and calling it a day.

Re: San Francisco is spending $1.7M on one public toilet

#605

Post by Balgair »

tristor wrote: post #53

Paris has automatically self-cleaning public toilets all around and they cost around $200k each to build and install. There’s no way this is a remotely reasonable cost and is clearly a grift.

I like how there is currently a porto-john in the exact spot right now. Like, there is currently a working toilet in the exact location that is, to my limited knowledge, doing the bare minimum well enough right now. For likely much less in my entire life than the 1.7M that just building the new toilet will cost.

If it's not corruption, then I am more worried.

Re: San Francisco is spending $1.7M on one public toilet

#606

Post by notch656a »

jquery wrote: post #604
notch656a wrote: post #531

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>But damn if this city doesn’t try its hardest, moreso than almost any other city I know of. This is the problem. The problem is you're trying too damn hard. Just build the fucking toilet. Less trying hard to do things the perfect way and be better than "almost any other city." At this point you should be looking at Camden or Gary IN for inspiration.

>“Just build the toilet” Did you think we are doing anything else? The article makes it pretty clear that’s all that is happening, but it’s making a big fuss over the fact some planning needs to take place, and that the planning website has some corporate-speak about doing our best or whatever. $1.7m is what it costs to hook up a full service public restroom in SF from idea to completion. It’s not cheap to build on t…

It's clear to me they're doing a lot else.

Re: San Francisco is spending $1.7M on one public toilet

#607

Post by puffoflogic »

erulabs wrote: post #594
puffoflogic wrote: post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

Fascism is the idea that the nation (and the race) of a people is more important than any individual member of the people. A fascist would say bureaucracy only implies a lack of power. Private property is the opposite of the textbook definition of fascism - private ownership is literally the idea that EVERY SINGLE individual is more important than the nation. The fascist answer is to consolidate more power in a singl…

[flagged]

Re: San Francisco is spending $1.7M on one public toilet

#608

Post by Kalium »

notch656a wrote: post #598
Kalium wrote: post #586

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I lived in Oakland, my apartment building had several close calls with wildfires caused by poorly contained campfires in a nearby encampment of vulnerable community members housed in tents to keep the wind off as they slept. Given that lockable wooden sheds / "tiny homes" can and do catch fire from things like poorly managed propane stoves in particle board construction, perhaps a better solution is in order. As…

The Canadian woodworker built these structures for people who had no actual housing. Not people who had the immediate option of an actual house and just picked living in the shack for funzies. Your suggestion that these homeless people should have just went in 'actual' housing instead is absurd, it almost certainly wasn't an option for many if not most of them in the face of the immediate expedient options.

Thank you for clarifying that I correctly understood the earlier comment.

What would you like me to say at this juncture? I firmly believe that the root of the issue at hand is California's, and the Bay's, collective aversion to housing. It's an aversion written into policy. Policy can be changed.

Similarly, people in need can be housed by municipalities sufficiently devoted to doing so in a cost and time-effecitve manner. It just requires the political will to do so and a political system that does not cater to NIMBY impulses.

Please accept my apologies for my lack of clarity earlier. I do not think that people lacking housing should "just go into housing". You are completely correct. That would be utter nonsense. I think the proper policy response is actual housing for people, as opposed to an entrenched policy apparatus devoted to doing literally anything but that. I hope this clears things up for you.

Re: San Francisco is spending $1.7M on one public toilet

#609

Post by acchow »

stephencoyner wrote: post #340
hot_gril wrote: post #228

I've lived and worked in SF. Thankful that I'll probably never have another work-related reason to go back. SF is marked deprecated in my eyes.

It’s easy to pile onto articles that highlight some of the city’s mismanagement, but San Francisco is one of the most naturally beautiful places in the country. If you’re out on the west side by Golden Gate Park, Baker Beach or the Presidio it feels like you’re in a nature movie. Even with all of its problems, I will always love that city.

Or on the top of any hill (Russian Hill, Nob Hill, Potrero Hill, Bernal Heights, etc. etc. etc.)

Re: San Francisco is spending $1.7M on one public toilet

#610

Post by throwaway5752 »

mardifoufs wrote: post #431
throwaway5752 wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can see why you were downvoted. You are correct about the submitted article, and these types of posts attract a different audience - newer, lower karma accounts that tend to focus on non-technical subjects. Yahoo doesn't produce much content, they distribute it. This is from the National Review, which is a partisan editorial magazine. It is not bias or incorrect to say it is not journalism. It is a subsidiary of th…

What's the "truth" behind the headline then? Genuine question, I totally agree that it sounds a bit "too bad to be true" especially without more context. But what's the other side of this story?

I sorry, I didn't make my point very clearly: I think this article is raises non-issue, intended to create conflict and bad feelings. They say that the opposite of love is not hate, it's apathy; I am ambivalent about this article and am not invested enough to knowledgeably discuss it. I'm not an SF resident, and I don't know how much it would reasonably cost to put up a durable and safe public toilet in a high cost, seismically active urban area. I don't have time to figure that out, so I'll assume the people involved are doing their best and I will go on with my life. There are a lot of people here focused on unproductive negativity, and that is not good for them or Hacker News as a community.

The truth is there is always something to get outraged about somewhere, and rather than focusing on them everyone should do their best to live with dignity, integrity, and empathy.

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